Latest news with #CarbonDioxideRemoval
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Carbon Direct & Microsoft Release 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal
Fifth edition introduces criteria for marine carbon removal pathways and enhanced technical guidance across all CDR pathways. Updated criteria incorporates lessons from Microsoft's 22-million-tonne procurement program and reflects evolving regulatory frameworks, carbon markets, and climate science. Technical glossaries and refined measurement protocols strengthen accessibility and scientific rigor for project developers and buyers. NEW YORK, July 10, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Carbon Direct and Microsoft today announced the release of the 2025 edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal. This fifth edition, which builds on multiple years of application, market feedback, and advances in climate science, continues to shape the global conversation on high-quality carbon removal and the evolution in carbon dioxide removal (CDR) quality benchmarks. The inaugural criteria were introduced in 2021 and are updated annually, serving as the industry's leading resource for project developers seeking to deliver high-integrity carbon removal, and for buyers evaluating the quality of their CDR portfolios. >> Read the 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal Climate science and recent policy developments underscore the urgency for rapid deployment and scale-up of CDR technologies, with estimates indicating the global community must remove 100-1,000 billion metric tonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) by 2100 to limit warming to 1.5°C, requiring annual removals of 5-10 GtCO2 by midcentury. Current deployment of high-quality CDR remains only a fraction of what is needed, highlighting a significant gap. In response, major U.S. legislation has delivered unprecedented funding and incentives for CDR, the EU has established a rigorous certification framework to ensure quality and transparency, dozens of countries now include CDR in their climate strategies, and COP29's Article 6.4 guidance has clarified international rules for trading CDR between nations, collectively laying the groundwork for scaling CDR to meet global climate targets. "Science and policy advances continue to demonstrate the critical need for equitable, science-based CDR standards that not only guide CDR, but also inform broader sustainability procurement strategies, including environmental attribute certificates for industrial decarbonization, and corporate insetting programs," said Jonathan Goldberg, CEO, Carbon Direct. "Quality remains the biggest challenge in rapidly scaling and advancing high-impact carbon dioxide removal. Adhering to evidence-based CDR criteria is imperative; these updated 2025 benchmarks provide the rigorous, science-based framework needed to help the industry maintain quality, assisting buyers in making informed decisions as we scale toward the gigatonne removals needed to achieve climate goals." The 2025 edition establishes rigorous standards across nine distinct CDR pathways, ranging from nature-based solutions, including afforestation and soil carbon sequestration, to engineered approaches, such as direct air capture, and the newly addressed abiotic marine methods. Each pathway includes updated guidance reflecting the latest scientific research, operational experience, and regulatory developments. Breakthrough guidance for marine carbon removal: The 2025 criteria mark are among the first comprehensive standards established for abiotic marine CDR, specifically Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) and Direct Ocean Removal (DOR). These ocean-based approaches represent potentially massive-scale carbon removal opportunities, but require specialized monitoring protocols for both carbon accounting and marine ecosystem protection. The new guidance addresses unique challenges, including ocean circulation modeling, biogeochemical monitoring, and environmental risk management in marine environments. Enhanced technical precision across all pathways: Every CDR method received updated technical requirements, with new glossaries defining specialized terminology and clarifying complex concepts. The enhanced guidance reflects operational learnings from Microsoft's expanded procurement program, which has contracted over 22 million tonnes of CDR, and evaluated more than 400 project applications, since 2023. Strengthened measurement and verification standards: The 2025 edition places increased emphasis on direct measurement over modeling where feasible, while acknowledging the continued role of validated models in comprehensive carbon accounting. Updated measurement protocols incorporate advances in remote sensing, automated monitoring systems, and analytical techniques that have emerged since the previous edition. Microsoft's procurement experience directly informs the updated guidance. The company's CDR program has grown from 1.3 million tonnes in 2021 to over 22 million tonnes contracted in fiscal year 2024, with applications increasing 90% since the program's inaugural year. This market engagement provides real-world validation of quality standards and implementation challenges. "These updated criteria reflect our accumulated experience evaluating hundreds of CDR projects across multiple pathways and geographies," said Brian Marrs, Senior Director of Energy Markets at Microsoft. "The 2025 criteria reflect the latest science and operational insights, providing a foundation for continuous improvement to help ensure that as the carbon removal market grows, it does so with integrity and transparency." Carbon Direct's framework outlines six science-based principles that apply across engineered, hybrid, and nature-based removal approaches: 1) Social harms, benefits, and environmental justice; 2) Environmental harms and benefits; 3) Additionality and baselines; 4) Measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification (MMRV); 5) Durability; and 6) Leakage. These principles provide a consistent foundation for procurement evaluation and project benchmarking. Carbon Direct and Microsoft plan to continue their collaboration on future editions, with potential expansion into additional emerging pathways, including wetland restoration and carbon dioxide utilization technologies. The organizations remain committed to advancing CDR market development through transparent, science-based quality standards. To read the 2025 Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal, visit: To read the blog from Carbon Direct, visit: About Carbon Direct Carbon Direct is the leader in science-based carbon management, helping emerging and established climate leaders like Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, JetBlue, and The Russell Family Foundation drive scalable and just impact through deep decarbonization strategies and carbon dioxide removal. With Carbon Direct's scientific approach, organizations can confidently set targets and measure their emissions, implement reductions across their operations and supply chain, and build high-quality carbon dioxide removal into their climate plans to accelerate impact. To learn more visit: View source version on Contacts The ColabPR for Carbon Directpress@
ABC News
09-06-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Climate stability will require carbon removal on a large scale — are the existing methods up to the task? - ABC Religion & Ethics
If countries are to meet the Paris Agreement goal of holding 'the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels' and pursing efforts 'to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels', we're now told that reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone will be insufficient. Given our energy needs and the time it will take to transition to fully renewable sources of energy, Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) will also be needed, on a large scale. But there is considerable scepticism about CDR. In May, power company EnergyAustralia apologised to its customers after settling a Federal Court case launched by advocacy group Parents for Climate. In a statement published as part of the settlement, the company said: 'Burning fossil fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions that are not prevented or undone by carbon offsets.' There are several reasons why that might be true. One that critics frequently cite comes from the fact that the removals certified by carbon offsets can't be guaranteed to last as long as the emissions they are supposed to offset. Is this a good reason for dismissing CDR? CO₂ removal methods and the risk of reversal Broadly speaking, there are two types of CDR methods. 'Nature-based methods' use natural processes — like photosynthesis — to trap CO₂ in ecosystems such as forests, wetlands and farmlands. 'Engineered' methods, on the other hand, typically use advanced technology to capture CO₂ directly from the atmosphere or industrial sites. Both of these methods have drawn criticism. Some argue against investing in new carbon capture methods due to their high costs and technological uncertainties. Others argue that the benefits of nature-based solutions are profoundly limited, not least because of the short time horizon over which forests and other natural sinks can store carbon. The critics of nature-based methods are on to something. If the core idea of net zero emissions is balancing greenhouse gas additions and removals, we need the removals to last as long as the additions. However, the CO₂ we release today can persist in the atmosphere for centuries or even millennia. In contrast, many nature-based methods, like planting trees, might only store carbon for a few decades. This criticism highlights a genuine concern: merely planting a tree cannot be considered a valid offset if it eventually releases its absorbed CO₂ back into the atmosphere when it dies. This carries a 'reversal risk' — a risk that CO₂, once stored, will be re-released. However, while reversal risk is undoubtedly important, this doesn't mean that nature-based methods should be dismissed — instead, it means that they need to be managed well. Individual trees die, but provided a forest is properly maintained and managed over the long term, it can still act as a carbon sink. It's the continuous, deliberate maintenance of forests that ensures carbon is consistently captured, even if individual trees within the ecosystem die and are replaced. Additionally, reversal risk is not exclusive to nature-based methods. Engineered carbon removal methods and novel storage technologies also carry their own reversal risks. Storage facilities could fail, or novel technologies might prove less effective or reliable than initially expected. Investing all our resources in engineered CDR is problematic for another reason. Keeping within the 2°C carbon budget requires increasing the use of CDR now — and these technologies are not, even on an optimistic picture, going to be available at the scale required soon enough. Rather than being taken as grounds for dismissing these different CDR methods, we think these criticisms support a different conclusion. Each method on its own faces a serious problem — but they can complement each other, when used together. We must combine them strategically, using the strengths of each to offset the weaknesses of the other. Nature-based methods, if employed sensibly, offer the rapid, large-scale deployment that is needed now to help reduce peak global temperatures and slow warming trends. Engineered solutions, coming on stream later, have the potential for more secure long-term removals. These technologies, once fully developed, offer the prospect of more stable CO₂ storage options, significantly reducing the risk of reversal. What climate mitigation requires A number of companies recently announced they are leaving the Australian government's Climate Active carbon credit scheme amid concerns about its integrity. Some critics of carbon credit markets suggest that they operate simply as a way of allowing companies to buy the illusion of climate action, while continuing with business as usual. However, if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is right, we will need emission reductions to be accompanied by CDR into the foreseeable future, and we will need well-functioning carbon markets to deliver it. Stabilising the consequences of human activity on the climate will require reducing emissions — but alongside this, it will also require both nature-based and engineered methods of CDR, situated within a well-governed carbon credit market. Christian Barry is Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Garrett Cullity is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory at the Australian National University Together with a team of international climate scientists and policymakers, they are authors of a new paper discussing these themes at greater length, 'Considering Durability in Carbon Dioxide Removal Strategies for Climate Change Mitigation', forthcoming in Climate Policy.
