{"id":13883,"date":"2025-09-13T13:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/13883\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T13:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T13:10:11","slug":"big-businesses-are-doing-carbon-dioxide-removal-all-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/13883\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Businesses Are Doing Carbon Dioxide Removal All Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and H&M are currently investing in durable CDR.\u00a0A spokesperson for H&M described the fast-fashion company\u2019s purchase of 10,000 metric tons of durable CDR<\/a> from the Swiss company Climeworks, one of the largest purchases to date, and said H&M plans to use them to neutralize residual emissions. The tech companies affirmed their commitment to reduce emissions first and then use carbon removal to offset residual emissions, though none of them addressed NewClimate Institute\u2019s concerns that they would use large amounts of durable and nondurable CDR to claim progress toward net-zero.<\/p>\n

A statement provided to Grist from TotalEnergies did not address CDR. It instead described the company\u2019s support for carbon capture and storage and \u201cnature-based solutions.\u201d The latter refers to short-lived offsets, such as tree-planting, that the NewClimate Institute does not believe are appropriate for offsetting fossil fuel emissions.<\/p>\n

Apple, Duke Energy, and Shein declined to comment after seeing the report. The remaining 24 companies did not respond to inquiries from Grist.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist at the University of Michigan and the dean of its School for Environment and Sustainability, said the NewClimate Institute report is timely. \u201cRight now the whole idea of CDR \u2026 is kind of a Wild West scene, with lots of actors promising to do things that may or may not be possible,\u201d he said. He added that companies appear to be using CDR as an alternative to mitigating their climate pollution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe priority has to be on reducing emissions, not on durable CDR at this point,\u201d he told Grist.<\/p>\n

In the near term, durable CDR is doing virtually nothing to offset emissions. As of 2023, only 0.0023 gigatons<\/a> of CO2 were removed from the atmosphere each year using these methods. That\u2019s about 15,000 times less than the annual amount of climate pollution from fossil fuels and cement manufacturing.<\/p>\n

According to the NewClimate Institute, voluntary initiatives are no substitute for government-mandated emissions reduction targets and investments in durable CDR. To the extent that these initiatives exist, however, the organization says they should provide a clearer definition of what constitutes \u201cdurable\u201d carbon removal; determine companies\u2019 responsibility for scaling up durable CDR based on their ongoing and historical emissions, or\u2014perhaps more realistically\u2014on their ability to pay; and require companies to set separate targets for emissions reductions and support for durable CDR. The last recommendation is intended to reinforce a climate action hierarchy that puts mitigation before offsetting. Companies should not \u201chide inaction on decarbonization behind investments in removals,\u201d as the report puts it.<\/p>\n

Mooldijk said voluntary initiatives can incentivize investments in durable CDR by recognizing \u201cclimate contributions.\u201d These might manifest as simple statements about companies\u2019 monetary contributions to durable CDR, instead of claims about the amount of CO2 that they have theoretically neutralized.<\/p>\n

Some of these recommendations were submitted earlier this year to the Science-Based Targets initiative, the world\u2019s most respected verifier of private sector climate targets. The organization is getting ready to update<\/a> its corporate net-zero standard with new guidance on the use of CDR. Another standard-setter, the International Organization for Standardization, is similarly preparing to release new standards on net-zero<\/a>, which could curtail some of the most questionable corporate climate claims while also drumming up support for durable CDR.<\/p>\n

John Reilly, a senior lecturer emeritus at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said that ultimately, proper regulation of corporate climate commitments\u2014including of durable CDR\u2014will fall on governments. Companies \u201care happy to throw a little money into these things,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think voluntary guidelines are ever going to get you there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and H&M are currently investing in durable CDR.\u00a0A spokesperson for H&M described the fast-fashion company\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,5424,1477,14096,4413,242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-13883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-desk","tag-emissions","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}