{"id":18682,"date":"2025-09-12T20:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T20:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/18682\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T20:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T20:31:13","slug":"report-big-businesses-are-doing-carbon-dioxide-removal-all-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/18682\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Big businesses are doing carbon dioxide removal all wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere<\/a>, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world\u2019s foremost authority on the topic. But only some types of carbon removal are actually effective \u2014\u00a0and these are largely not the kind that major companies are investing in.<\/p>\n

A new report<\/a> from the NewClimate Institute, a European think tank, finds that 35 of the world\u2019s biggest businesses are leaning on short-term tree-planting and other forms of \u201cnondurable\u201d carbon removal in order to say they\u2019ve neutralized some of their climate pollution. The handful of companies investing in more reliable carbon removal are mostly not doing so in conjunction with deep decarbonization, or the elimination of carbon emissions altogether.<\/p>\n

There is a \u201cdangerous mismatch between corporate climate claims and the reality of what is needed to reach global net-zero,\u201d the organization said in a press release. Reaching net-zero by the middle of the century \u2014 a scenario where all unavoidable human-caused climate pollution is canceled out via carbon removal \u2014 is considered necessary<\/a> to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n

Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, refers to efforts to capture CO2 after it\u2019s been emitted into the atmosphere and store it in rocks, land, ocean reservoirs, or human-made products. The most reliable types of carbon removal, which the NewClimate Institute calls \u201cdurable CDR,\u201d involve injecting carbon into geological formations or turning it into rocks, where it will stay put for at least 1,000 years \u2014\u00a0about the same amount of time that CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels will remain in the atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Currently, these durable techniques don\u2019t work at scale: They account for just 0.1 percent of global carbon removal each year. The rest is based on methods like planting trees, restoring wetlands, and burying carbon in the soil, which are much cheaper but can only keep carbon out of the atmosphere for decades or a few centuries at most.<\/p>\n

Government investment and regulations are needed to scale up durable CDR \u2014\u00a0experts consider the next decade to be \u201ccrucial<\/a>\u201d for developing the technology \u2014 but the private sector can help too, by funding durable CDR projects and research. In industries like construction, for which total decarbonization is not yet possible, companies will likely need to use durable CDR to offset residual emissions as part of a credible climate strategy.<\/p>\n

The NewClimate Institute authors looked at 35 of the world\u2019s largest companies across seven sectors: agrifood, aviation, automobiles, fashion, fossil fuels, tech, and utilities. Tech companies showed the most investment in durable CDR \u2014\u00a0Microsoft alone is responsible for 70 percent of all durable CDR ever contracted \u2014 but the report criticizes the sector for planning to claim \u201cpotentially significant amounts\u201d of both durable and nondurable CDR toward net-zero targets. Tech companies can fully decarbonize without offsets, so their emissions targets should not depend on carbon removal.<\/p>\n

Aviation was the other sector showing the greatest support for durable CDR, but only one airline \u2014\u00a0Japan\u2019s All Nippon Airways \u2014 had a \u201creasonable\u201d plan to use the technology to neutralize residual emissions by 2050. Three airlines lacked concrete plans.<\/p>\n

Of the 15 companies across the\u00a0agrifood, automobiles, and fashion sectors, only H&M and Stellantis are investing in durable CDR. Two of the five utilities in the report, Eon and Orsted, are supporting durable CDR projects, but it\u2019s unclear whether Eon intends to use removals to count toward its net-zero goal, and the NewClimate Institute says some of Orsted\u2019s removals are being double-counted in the emissions reduction targets of both Denmark and Microsoft. The five fossil fuel companies analyzed \u2014 Equinor, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sinopec, and TotalEnergies \u2014 are focusing mostly on carbon capture and storage, which intercepts CO2 at the point of emission, before it escapes into the atmosphere, and does not reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.<\/p>\n

\"LargeA Climeworks carbon removal facility in Iceland.
John Moore \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Silke Mooldijk, an expert with the NewClimate Institute and the lead author of the new report,\u00a0 said she wasn\u2019t surprised to find limited support for durable CDR, except from some tech companies. What did surprise her was that companies investing in durable CDR projects did not publicly report any information on these projects\u2019 environmental and social risks. Some CDR methods, for example, may jeopardize biodiversity<\/a>, while others require large amounts of renewable energy<\/a> that would have to be diverted from other uses. \u201cNot a single company in our report disclosed details on potential risks of projects they support and how they mitigate those,\u201d Mooldijk told Grist.<\/p>\n

Grist reached out to all 35 companies included in the report. Adidas, Amazon, Enel, Google, H&M, Inditex, Microsoft, and TotalEnergies responded by describing their net-zero commitments. Adidas and Enel, which are not currently investing in durable CDR, said they would use \u201chigh-quality\u201d carbon removals to offset their residual climate pollution after taking actions to decarbonize; Inditex said it is \u201cexploring\u201d durable CDR to offset residual emissions, and its use of the technology \u201cwill be determined by the evolution of reference scientific frameworks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0<\/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.\u00a0<\/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 \u2014\u00a0perhaps more realistically \u2014\u00a0on 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 \u2014\u00a0including of durable CDR \u2014 will 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

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Google did not respond to the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-18682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}