Following 2015’s UN Paris Agreement, each signatory country submitted a strategy indicating how they intend to decarbonize their economy. While much of the work comes from cutting emissions, plans can also include a ‘residual emissions’ category- that’s where carbon removal comes in. 

But recent research from our panelist Holly Buck and her colleagues found no standard definition of residual emissions.

Residual emissions are significant; most come from agriculture, industry, and mobility. Crucially, land-use sinks won’t offset all residual emissions by 2050- meaning many countries hope new CDR technologies are reliable. 

For the world to meet climate goals, countries must achieve the ambitions set out in their plans. If those plans are not well-defined, it is unlikely they will achieve success. 

Also on this episode, the panel discusses Climeworks’ call to differentiate CDR from emissions cuts, as well as Stanford’s new CDR program and some controversy surrounding it.   

One of the authors, Holly Buck, joins us today to talk about this important research. And returning to our policy panel is another leading expert in the legalities of CDR- Wil Burns, the Co-Director at the Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy at American University. 

On This Episode

Holly Jean Buck

Wil Burns

Radhika Moolgavkar

Resources

Holly’s Research on Residual Emissions

Climate Action Tracker

SBTI

Climework’s Announcement

Stanford CDR Program

Chronicle of Higher Education Article on Stanford + Oil Companies

Connect with Nori

Nori

Nori’s Twitter

Nori’s other podcast Reversing Climate Change

Nori’s CDR meme twitter account