SOURCE: Carbon Brief and European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC)
DATE: January 31, 2018
SNIP: The potential for using negative emissions technologies to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement could be more “limited” than previously thought, concludes a new report by European science advisors.
Negative emissions technologies (NETs) describe a variety of methods – many of which are yet to be developed – that aim to limit climate change by removing CO2 from the air.
Some of these techniques are already included by scientists in modelled “pathways” showing how global warming can be limited to between 1.5C and 2C above pre-industrial levels, which is the goal of the Paris Agreement.
However, the new report says there is no “silver bullet technology” that can be used to solve the problem of climate change, scientists said at a press briefing held in London.
Instead, “the primary focus must be on mitigation, on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases,” they added.
The report concludes:
“We conclude that these technologies offer only limited realistic potential to remove carbon from the atmosphere and not at the scale envisaged in some climate scenarios.”