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Climate Brief: Week Two @ COP27 and CO2 Removals [1]

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Date: 2022-11-14

Loss and damage looms large on the agenda as the climate talks at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, enter their second and final week. The COP is scheduled to end Friday but could stretch into Saturday or even longer as negotiators haggle over the wording in the conference’s final document, which seeks to reach consensus on how the 200 participating countries can keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees C before 2100.

Loss and damage refers to the retributions the poor developing countries seek to compensate them for the impacts of climate change on their communities or countries. These consequences are beyond that which can be adapted to.

x “With loss and damage we most often consider physical destruction. However, we must consider social and non-economic losses and damages too – ones felt keenly by millions of women and girls.”



Mary Robinson today on #LossAndDamage at a #COP27 #Gender Day event w/ @GCUclimatejust. pic.twitter.com/c8VELb2CFJ — The Elders (@TheElders) November 14, 2022

Carbon removals

As has been widely reported, our progress in regulating temperature is not nearly enough. Global temperatures are on course to exceed 1.5 degrees C by the mid-2030s. The Guardian’s reporter Zeke Hausfather writes on carbon removal, which remains a controversial topic. Those opposing it claim it will be a deterrence to rigorously reducing GHG emissions.

The IPCC, however, states that removals are key to our attaining climate ambitions. To ensure that temperature rise is at 1.5C by 2100, 6bn tons of atmospheric carbon must be removed annually. (In this scenario, we are reducing back to 1.5, having surpassed it in the 2030s.)

Hausfather reports on different types of removals:

trees and soil could provide only half of the carbon dioxide removal that we need

direct air capture , sucks CO2 from the atmosphere;

using agricultural waste or wood and storing carbon from it deep underground;

spreading minerals like basalt that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere on to agricultural fields;

removing CO2 directly from ocean water; making ocean water less acidic so it absorbs more CO2;

sinking kelp or other plants into the deep ocean where the carbon they have absorbed will stay for millennia to come.

Hausfather concludes:

We have a saying in the climate science world – that CO2 is forever. It will take close to half a million years before a ton of CO2 emitted today from burning fossil fuels is completely removed from the atmosphere naturally. This means that when we try to neutralise or undo fossil fuel emissions – for example, with carbon offsets – those interventions should operate over a similar timeframe: a ton of emissions from cutting down trees can be neutralised by putting more carbon in trees or soils, but CO2 from fossil fuels needs to be balanced by more permanent carbon removal. This is the reason why the respected Science Based Targets initiative only allows measures that permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere to neutralise a company’s remaining fossil fuel emissions in their net-zero standard – and only alongside deep emissions reductions. We should not oversell the role of carbon removal. The vast majority of the time it is cheaper to reduce emissions than to remove CO2 from the atmosphere after the fact. Models that limit warming to 1.5C show that we need to reduce global CO2 emissions by around 90%, while only using carbon removal for around 10%. But 10% of the solution to a problem as big as climate change is still something we cannot afford to ignore.

Following COP26, the Article 6 Supervisory Body had two tasks: develop methodologies for the overall carbon market mechanism, and second provide recommendations related to the removals. During the opening days of COP27, the Supervisory Body proposal, Removal activities under the Article 6.4 mechanism was released.

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) Senior Attorney Erika Lennon issued the following statement:

In 2021 the world spent a total of $755bn on reducing emissions. We should probably aim to spend about 1% of that money on carbon removal technologies. But we cannot simply sit back and assume that ways of removing billions of tons of CO2 per year will magically appear in the decades to come. By investing today, we can ensure that we are in a good position to make net-zero a reality, stop the world from continuing to heat up, and give ourselves the tools to ultimately reverse global warming in the future.

Thematic Days

The focus on Monday was on gender and the impact of climate change on water security.

The former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, who has played a key role in elevating gender issues at previous COPs, arrived Saturday and called the climate crisis “a man-made problem with a feminist solution”.

Other themes this week include energy, with a focus on shifting from fossil fuels to a clean economy; biodiversity day, where nature and nature-based solutions will be discussed; and technology, an opportunity for entrepreneurs to share ideas and discoveries. Technology day will provide venues where fossil fuel lobbyists can present their solutions and discussions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) will also be on the agenda.

Tweets of the day

x CIEL staff updates from the ongoing climate talks in Egypt.



What is the Action for Climate Empowerment #ACE, why it matters, and what happened last week at the climate conference?



Hear from CIEL Staff Attorney @fra_mingro all about #ACE at @COP27. pic.twitter.com/hfY8793m6X — Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) November 14, 2022

x #COP27: We talked a lot about the #CarbonMarkets (aka #Article6) during week 1.



We have one key ask for this week: The Supervisory Body must reject the recommendations on "removals" to create a governance structure that doesn’t undermine the integrity of the #ParisAgreement 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/XzlrOqgYDw — Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) November 14, 2022

x "If we are not securing #WomensLandRights, we are not going to close the gender inequality gap." - #Stand4HerLand's @Mwaura_Muiru spoke today at #COP27 about accelerating gender-just climate leadership using collective action. Check out the recording ➡️ https://t.co/wJ5GtST2VV pic.twitter.com/hqHZv6P0s6 — Stand4HerLand (@Stand4HerLand) November 14, 2022

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/14/2136088/-Climate-Brief-Week-Two-COP27-and-CO2-Removals

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