Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) is an essential part of achieving global climate goals, complementing emissions reduction to limit warming and build climate resilience.
This Expert Insight explores the role of GGR in the net zero transition, the different solutions available and practical implications, offering insights into market readiness, costs and efficacy. It examines the role of businesses, the evolving global policy landscape, and the mechanisms available to integrate GGR within and beyond value chains. By addressing challenges such as public acceptance, governance and sectoral risks, the report aims to inform and guide stakeholders in leveraging GGR effectively and responsibly to meet net zero targets.
Insight Highlights
- The Role of GGR in Climate Goals: Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) is essential for achieving net zero emissions by 2050, complementing emissions reduction. Conventional methods like afforestation dominate current removal efforts, but novel approaches, including direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), are growing rapidly.
- GGR Solutions: Conventional GGR methods, such as forest restoration and soil carbon sequestration, are well-established but face land-use competition and biodiversity risks. Novel solutions, including biochar, enhanced weathering and ocean alkalinity enhancement, offer significant potential but require further research and investment to scale.
- Market and Economic Trends: The GGR market faces high costs and limited deployment. Early investment is critical to scale solutions and lower costs, although an economic paradox exists where growing demand may drive prices up before broader deployment reduces them.
- Opportunities for Businesses: Companies should integrate GGR into their value chains, such as through carbon insetting or investing in technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and DACCS. Businesses delaying GGR adoption risk missing out on market leadership and future cost reductions.
- Policy and Governance Gaps: Effective governance is essential to ensure GGR supplements emissions reduction activity rather than replacing it. Key challenges include public acceptance, fair cost distribution and the development of robust measurement and verification standards.
- Future Directions: Accelerating research, fostering public-private partnerships, and advancing supportive policies are critical to scaling GGR. Prompt action will enhance climate resilience and create economic opportunities while addressing key challenges like land use, energy requirements and public perception.
Executive summary
Climate change, driven by human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has already increased global temperatures by approximately 1°C since pre-industrial times, resulting in more frequent and severe environmental impacts like droughts, floods, and rising sea levels. While the Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to 1.5°C, achieving this goal requires a dual approach: rapid emissions reduction and greenhouse gas removal (GGR).
This expert insight aims to summarise for business leaders, practitioners and policymakers the role of GGR in the global net zero transition, and its relevance in achieving corporate climate commitments. The insight highlights the main types of conventional and novel removal solutions available, their market readiness, costs and efficacies. It considers when and how GGR can be applied in a business context and highlights some key policy and governance challenges that need to be overcome to unlock the full potential of GGR in contributing towards the global net zero transition.
GGR complements emissions reduction, also known as climate mitigation, by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, either through conventional methods such as afforestation or innovative technologies like direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). Whilst GGR must not substitute mitigation activities, it is crucial for addressing residual emissions in hard-to-abate sectors, including heavy industry and transport. Companies committing to net-zero targets in these sectors must therefore plan for GGR investments alongside reducing operational and supply chain emissions.
GGR methods vary in their stage of development, resource intensity, and potential impacts on biodiversity and local communities. Companies must conduct robust due diligence to ensure investments are credible, sustainable and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Public acceptance of GGR technologies is critical; misconceptions, particularly around offsetting and geoengineering, must be addressed through responsible communication and engagement. Delay in adopting GGR could hinder the availability and maturity of removal methods, creating supply constraints as demand grows. Early investment in GGR not only supports technological scale-up but also positions companies as market leaders, offering reputational and financial benefits. Furthermore, GGR can present new revenue streams for business, such as products using captured GHGs, and it can also align with sustainability objectives, including carbon insetting initiatives that deliver co-benefits for communities and ecosystems.
The policy landscape for GGR is nascent and lacks comprehensive global frameworks. Governance challenges include ensuring that GGR supplements rather than replaces emissions reduction, addressing equitable distribution of costs and benefits, and establishing robust measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) standards. While progress has been made in policy support for research and development (R&D) and MRV, significant gaps remain in regulatory safeguards, decision-making support, and public engagement.
Despite increasing momentum, GGR faces significant technological, policy, and economic challenges that must be addressed to meet the urgency of the climate crisis. GGR is indispensable for achieving net zero targets, yet the current pace of development is insufficient. Accelerating R&D, fostering supportive policy frameworks, and mobilising private and public investment are imperative. Early action on GGR will not only enhance climate resilience but also create economic and environmental benefits, driving a just transition to a sustainable future.
Authors and contributors:
- Jillian Neufeldt, Harriet Harthan, Nick Scott and Emily Farnworth, Centre for Climate Engagement, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge
- Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Centre for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge
- Dr Steve Smith, Oxford Net Zero and CO2RE
- Paul Begley, Negative Emissions Programme
- Dr Joanna Kolomanska, Qurator