How Governments Can Remove Billions of Tons of Carbon
Three policy levers for meaningful action
Governments around the world have made ambitious commitments to decarbonize their economies and achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To reach this target, governments need to make bold investments in reducing emissions from their energy, transportation, agricultural, and industrial sectors. Some sectors are harder to decarbonize than others, like cement, steel, aviation, and shipping which make up more than 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Permanent carbon removal - the process of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently storing it away - can help neutralize the carbon impact of these essential industries. However, shifting to more permanent carbon removal solutions is going to require a giant leap from where we are today. In the coming decades, we will need to remove and safely store billions of tons of CO2 - roughly on the scale of the annual volume of oil produced today1.
In a previous post, I touched on strategies for private actors to support permanent carbon removal. I also believe that governments at the local, state, and national levels have a huge role to play in scaling up the technologies needed to meet global climate commitments. Around the world, governments are planning to make massive clean energy and green infrastructure investments. Now is the time for them to include permanent carbon removal solutions as part of those investments so they can help achieve these ambitious net-zero commitments.
The experience of other low-carbon innovations can offer valuable lessons that can be applied to carbon removal technologies. Professor Gregory Nemet’s book How Solar Energy Became Cheap describes nine innovation accelerators that would have sped up the development of solar, which he believes can be applied to other low-carbon technologies, including direct air capture. The following policy levers are adapted from his “technology push” framework to show how local, state, and federal governments can drive innovation in permanent carbon removal, scale-up this climate fighting solution, and sustainably create new jobs and industries along the way.
Make long-term investments in research, development, and deployment (RD&D)
Investing in RD&D programs is necessary to develop new technologies and improve on existing ones. In permanent carbon removal, funding RD&D can help generate new ways to reduce the cost of carbon capture materials, improve energy efficiency of capture machines, or shrink the physical size of carbon capture plants. In an industry this nascent, the research gaps are endless. Fortunately, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine produced a valuable research agenda to identify priority areas for RD&D investment. The Energy Futures Initiative also offers extensive insights on accelerating innovation in emerging carbon removal fields.
The good news is, we are beginning to see meaningful RD&D investments in carbon removal and utilization technologies in the United States. The key is not only to increase these investments, but also to institutionalize RD&D in carbon removal to ensure that funding and technical support is both long-term and predictable. Recent plans to form the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Climate (ARPA-C) to accelerate progress on carbon capture, removal, and storage technologies are encouraging, and could be a model for more governments to follow.
Funding R&D is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient. New innovations and technologies need to work outside the lab, making the inclusion of deployment in addition to research and development critical. Hence the RD&D. Additionally, these technologies need to find viable markets in order to drive private investment and scale. That’s where the next policy lever comes into play.
Use public procurement and incentives to drive early uptake
Governments have significant leverage and procurement power to incentivize adoption of carbon removal solutions - as they have done with solar PV and electric vehicles. Captured carbon can be used as a feedstock in many contexts including greenhouses, breweries, and even aviation fuel. The most promising near term use case is probably concrete - where captured CO2 can be infused in concrete during the curing process and permanently stored in the end product, creating a stronger, more durable concrete as a positive by-product. While some of these use cases do not result in permanent carbon removal, they can still reduce emissions while supporting the underlying technologies necessary for carbon removal.
Governments can drive early uptake of carbon removal through three mechanisms. First, they can use tax policies to incentivize carbon removal. The United States has used Section 45Q of the Tax Code to provide tax credits for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide on a per ton basis. Carbon180 offers some specific ideas on how 45Q could be updated and expanded to benefit DAC and similar carbon removal technologies. Second, governments can procure products made with captured carbon directly. There is current legislation being considered to incentivize procurement of low-carbon concrete made from captured carbon in New York State, and I recently co-authored a white paper on how federal procurement policy can drive demand for low-carbon concrete. Governments are some of the largest purchasers of building materials and fuels, which can be made from captured carbon, so the potential impact is huge. Finally, governments can buy carbon removal directly from carbon removal providers paid for by applying fees on high polluting sectors. Implementing these policies develops and shapes stronger markets for carbon removal, helping commercialize new technologies, and ultimately paving the way for follow-on investment from the private sector.
Stand up system enablers to achieve scale
Removing and permanently storing millions of tons of atmospheric carbon is years away. However, the complex work of creating the supporting regulations, infrastructure, and workforce (system enablers) to make large-scale carbon removal a reality must be prioritized now. First, permitting for long-term geologic storage of captured carbon needs to be streamlined while ensuring robust environmental and safety benchmarks are met. Permitting delays can create bottlenecks thereby limiting scale potential. ClearPath has some ideas on removing those barriers. Second, widely deployed carbon removal and storage will increasingly depend on pipelines to move captured carbon to geologic storage hubs. Princeton’s Net Zero America report projects the United States needs 110,000 km of new CO2 pipeline and thousands of injection wells, more than 10 times what is currently in place. Encouragingly, the recently introduced SCALE Act is a bipartisan effort to start developing some of this needed transportation infrastructure to the tune of almost $5 billion. Finally, large scale carbon removal will require a well-trained workforce. Rhodium Group projects that DAC alone could generate 300,000 mostly high wage jobs in construction, operations, and maintenance. Taking advantage of this economic opportunity requires planning and training workers well in advance. Ideally, governments would prioritize workers with relevant skills from industries negatively impacted by the clean energy transition and communities historically left out of past energy sector opportunities. These investments constitute the enabling infrastructure for carbon removal to transition from early adoption to widespread deployment. Critically, governments can use these approaches to not only protect communities, upskill workers, and create new jobs, but prioritize equity in climate change solutions.
The public sector has a significant, critical role to play in shaping policies to reduce costs and scale up low carbon technologies. The Department of Energy recently announced a goal to cut solar costs by more than half by 2030. A similar moonshot for more expensive technologies like DAC could be incredibly beneficial.
A carbon tax or R&D investments on their own are not enough - a much more cohesive and concentrated effort is needed.
Encouragingly, the United States government and other governments around the world have taken initial steps to realize this “technology push,” but we need to set an example in doing more. States and other countries can use these examples and learn from successful models to follow suit. A carbon tax or R&D investments on their own are not enough - a much more cohesive and concerted effort is needed. These efforts are needed now because activating carbon removal at the scale we need will not be instant. It will require years of investment.
There is no guarantee that DAC or similar carbon removal technology will follow the rapid adoption or falling cost curve of solar, wind, or batteries. But these policy levers create opportunities to meaningfully drive down costs, improve the technology, and create economic opportunities along the way. These policy levers are not exhaustive, so let me know what other government actions you think can help scale carbon removal that might be worth a future post. Ultimately, we should encourage local, state, and national governments to take an activist approach to scaling up permanent carbon removal technologies to increase our chances in the climate fight.
To receive regular ideas and analyses on carbon removal and the new carbon economy, please subscribe below. If you enjoyed this post, please share it with friends. And if you’d like to get in touch, you can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Based on 95 million barrels per day oil production