Four Assessment Criteria For Carbon Removal Solutions
The carbon removal landscape can seem messy with many new companies popping up.
You’d think it would help that McKinsey, Microsoft, and Frontier have shared their assessment criteria for buying carbon removal, but that means three different lists of six to eight criteria against each other.
Here’s our promise to you: We’ll simplify it.
In the end, there are four themes that matter:
Permanence, so the carbon is stored away for a long time
Robustness, including monitoring and verification and no double counting
Side effects where one maximizes benefits and minimizes harm
Scalability of the solution
Let’s expand on them.
{ 1 } Permanence
The first difference between carbon removal solutions is for how long the CO₂ is avoided in our atmosphere.
When we breathe we exhale CO₂, so we could delay the release of CO₂ by holding our breath. It’s just very short-term!
Planting trees also captures CO₂ through photosynthesis (yay to what we learned in high school biology). But if the trees rot or fall prey to a forest fire, the embodied carbon is released back into the air as CO₂.
One could take those trees, or other types biomass, and treat it at high temperatures to make so-called biochar. The biochar can be buried to store carbon for decades to centuries.
Then there are some types of carbon removal we call “permanent.” This often entails storing the carbon in geological reservoirs deep underground for millions or tens of millions of years. We simplify this by saying 1000+ years to keep it relevant for the climate crisis we are facing today.
The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) corporate net zero standard requires carbon removal to be permanent, but there is a role for carbon removal spanning from short-term to permanent.
{ 2 } Robustness
While the need for robustness is obvious, there are some quality marks to look out for.
The experts in McKinsey, Microsoft and Frontier mention these considerations:
Ensuring that the solution’s contribution makes a difference compared to if it had not existed. McKinsey, Microsoft and Frontier refer to this as “additionality.” For example, one can’t take an existing forest and claim carbon removal credits for it if the forest would remain anyhow.
Requiring independent, third-party validation and verification. Puro.earth, for example, is a registry for carbon removal credits, and they require third parties to verify and monitor carbon removal projects.
{ 3 } Side effects
How does the carbon removal solution impact the environment, energy consumption, or livelihoods? These are all important side effects.
If a carbon removal solution is energy intensive, it can drive up power prices for others in the region. Or if the solution competes with arable land, it competes with food production. Frontier refers to this last consideration as “physical footprint.”
Other considerations mentioned by Microsoft are community involvement and effects on biodiversity, community health, and risk of wildfire.
{ 4 } Scalability
Frontier, an advance market commitment to buy an initial $1B+ of permanent carbon removal between 2022 and 2030, focus explicitly on solutions that are scalable.
They assess whether a solution:
“Has a path to being affordable at scale (<$100 per ton)”
“Has a path to being a meaningful part of the carbon removal solution portfolio (>0.5 gigatons per year)”
This is not an assessment of quality, but a separate way to signal demand for the scalable solutions that we need.
And that’s it!
It really can be that simple. As you explore carbon removal solutions, consider the four themes of 1. Permanence, 2. Robustness, 3. Side effects, and 4. Scalability.
