A Policy Brief from the Academy of Finland’s flagship Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center (ACCC) and the Climate Leadership Coalition (CLC) describes the role and needs for large scale anthropogenic and biogenic carbon sinks in achieving Paris agreement goals.
The global average temperature – accelerated partly by the El Nino effect – for the past twelve months (June 2023–May 2024) was 1.63 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average. The carbon budget for +1,5C with 66% certainty will be closed during summer 2024 with current CO2-emissions levels.
“The rising global temperature and vanishing carbon budget mean that virtually all anthropogenic CO2 emissions, from now on, need to be sequestered from the atmosphere and stored permanently to enable a return to the +1.5 °C level following a now inevitable overshoot,” says Jouni Keronen, Professor of Practice, University of Helsinki, and Co-Chair, Advisory Board, Climate Leadership Coalition.
Anthropogenic and biogenic carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays a vital role in sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere especially during the second half of the century. . The deployment of CDR solutions needs to increase exponentially, similar to what has been seen with solar and wind energy over the past decade
Achieving this requires a CO2 price incentive, robust and transparent carbon sink measurements and an adequate regulatory framework that includes the role of CDR in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). Following the Global Stocktake, future COPs must explicitly acknowledge the magnitude of the CDR gap, update carbon budget objectives for at least 2070, and preferably 2100, and instigate new negotiations on CDR.
“Until now, the European Union has been the champion of climate action. It is important that it continues to hold this position and will define its long-term carbon budget and needed policies to scale-up CDR as soon as possible, as scaling of technical and nature-based solutions will take years even in the best-case scenario,” says Juha Turkki, MSc., Development Director, Climate Leadership Coalition.
For more information: Jouni Keronen, Ph.D., MBA, Professor of Practice, University of Helsinki, Co-Chair, Advisory Board, Climate Leadership Coalition, email: jouni.keronen@helsinki.fi; Juha Turkki, MSc., Development Director, Climate Leadership Coalition, email: juha.turkki@clc.fi
The Academy of Finland’s flagship “Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center (ACCC)” is constituted by the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Tampere University, and the University of Eastern Finland.
Climate Leadership Coalition (CLC) is the largest non-profit climate business network in Europe. CLC has 99 organizational members employing globally close to 1 million people and represent almost 70 % of the market cap of the OMX Nasdaq Helsinki stock exchange.