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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

14/12/23 07:53 AM IST

The limitations of CCS and CDR and their grip on our future climate

In News
  • According to Dubai declaration, draft decisions thus far have referred to the abatement and removal of carbon emissions using carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon-dioxide removal (CDR) technologies.
CCS & CDR
  • CCS refers to technologies that can capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) at a source of emissions before it is released into the atmosphere.
  • These sources include the fossil fuel industry (where coal, oil and gas are combusted to generate power) and industrial processes like steel and cement production.
  • CDR takes the forms of both natural means like afforestation or reforestation and technologies like direct air capture, where machines mimic trees by absorbing CO₂ from their surroundings and storing it underground.
  • There are also more complex CDR technologies like enhanced rock weathering, where rocks are broken down chemically; the resulting rock particles can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. Other technologies like bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) capture and store CO₂ from burning biomass, like wood.
Significance
  • The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), prepared by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), deals with climate mitigation.
  • It relies a lot on the use of CDR for its projections related to the world achieving the goal of limiting the world’s average surface temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C with no or limited overshoot. (Overshoot means the temperature limit is temporarily exceeded.)
  • If CO₂ emissions continue at current levels, we will have a 50% chance of exceeding 1.5 degrees C compared to pre-industrial levels in seven years.
  • To achieve the decrease in CO₂ emissions we need by direct mitigation would be nearly impossible at this point, and would require a lot of CDR.
  • Direct mitigation refers to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels with renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.
Methods of CDR
  • CDR methods like afforestation, reforestation, BECCS, and direct air capture are constrained by their need for land.
  • Land also invokes equity concerns. Land in the Global South is often considered to be ‘viable’ and/or ‘cost-effective’ for planting trees and deploying other large-scale CDR methods.
  • As a result, such CDR projects can adversely affect land rights of indigenous communities and biodiversity and compete with other forms of land-use, like agriculture that is crucial for ensuring food security.
  • By removing CO₂ from their environs, there are concerns that CCS and CDR create more ‘room’ to emit the greenhouse gas.
Source- The Hindu

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