New German climate goal only possible with negative emissions?

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Following the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in April 2021, the German government had to revise the Climate Protection Act. According to the revised law, Germany must be climate neutral as early as 2045 and greenhouse gas negative by 2050. These higher climate ambitions also mean earlier use of significant amounts of negative emissions. What changes have there been in climate legislation and what do the latest scenarios on carbon removal say for Germany?

As promised in our article on the global dimensions for negative emissions, this time around, we want to have a closer look at Germany. The country is touted for being one of the leaders in decarbonizing the energy system of an industrialised country both in terms of speed and scope. Renewable energies already make up 45 to 50 per cent of Germany’s electricity consumption with a goal to reach 65 per cent in 2030. 

Updated climate target requires climate neutrality by 2045

The German climate law has been revised in June 2021, after the Federal Constitutional Court required changes and more ambitious action. As a result the current government updated the country’s climate goals with an increased ambition towards climate or greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. From 2050 onwards Germany is supposed to be greenhouse gas negative. Figure 1 depicts Germany’s historical emissions, the targets stipulated in the new law and potential negative emissions in 2050 according to the study Klimaneutrales Deutschland 2045 (Climate neutral Germany 2045) (data sources: BMU, UBA, Agora Energiewende).

Figure 1: Historic greenhouse gas emissions and targets for Germany in Mt CO2eq according to the new climate law and estimates for negative emissions by Agora Energiewende (source: cr.hub)

For 2021, Agora Energiewende expects the strongest annual increase in emissions since 1990, with a plus of almost 50 Mt (source: Agora Energiewende). This means that emissions this year could be back at the level of 2019 before Corona. The emission reduction of 40 per cent compared to 1990, which the country managed to achieve in 2020, would then be obsolete again.  

Are negative emissions part of the German climate strategy? 

A few years ago negative emissions or CCS were not part of the discussion concerning the climate and emissions reduction strategy in Germany, at least not on the policy level and only partially in the scientific context. This outlook changed:

  1. It is increasingly clear that emissions of greenhouse gases will remain in hard-to-abate sectors (such as industry and agriculture) even after strong emission reductions. 
  2. The current efforts of decarbonizing sectors other than the electricity sector, specifically buildings and transport is lagging behind and might not deliver the emissions reductions needed to even achieve the older and less ambitious climate targets. 
  3. Climate ambitions grew as the impact of a warming planet is already clearly visible and civil society demands more action. On the EU level the new target of 55 per cent emission reductions by 2030 compared to 1990 has been agreed on, and Germany followed suite with its new climate law.

Therefore negative emissions are more prominent in recent scenarios and studies on how Germany might be able to achieve its climate targets. On the policy level, they are only implicitly mentioned in the new climate law in terms of negative emissions in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. Concrete expansion targets for technologies that generate negative emissions are still lacking.

How much negative emissions does Germany need?

In this analysis we present and compare the results and implications of three detailed studies released during the past three months: the study Klimaneutrales Deutschland 2045 (Climate neutral Germany 2045) by Agora Energiewende, the outcomes of the Fraunhofer ISI project Langfristszenarien für die Transformation des Energiesystems in Deutschland (Long-term scenarios for the transformation of the energy system in Germany) commissioned by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and the working paper Wissensstand zu CO2-Entnahmen (Knowledge base on CO2-removals) by the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). 

Based on those three publications, figure 2 depicts the projected needs for negative emissions in Germany. All of the studies agree that negative emissions in the order of several ten to hundred millions of tons CO2eq will be needed in Germany by 2050 to achieve the country’s climate targets.

Figure 2: Amount of negative emissions including LULUCF sector needed in Germany from 2030 onwards in Mt CO2eq (missing numbers in studies have been linearly interpolated) (source: cr.hub)

According to current estimates Germany emitted about 740 Mt of greenhouse gases in 2020. As figure 2 shows, the negative emissions necessary by the time Germany wants to reach climate neutrality (2045) range from 67 to 100 Mt CO2eq, so 9 to 13 per cent of 2020’s emissions. Scaling-up nature-based and technological solutions and technologies is already required starting today and in this decade. At present, the use of technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is comparatively expensive. Reducing these costs requires massive investments in technical and organisational infrastructure, and comprehensive political and economic support.

To some extent the new German climate law takes into account negative emissions and aims at a contribution of LULUCF sector of 25, 35 and 40 Mt in 2030, 2040 and 2045, respectively. However, land-use and forestry related carbon removal suffer from low permanence, tricky accounting and potential reversibility through misaligned management practices or natural events such as wildfires.

Thus, in addition to negative emission from the LULUCF sector as part of nature-based carbon removal solutions, technological removals will be needed as well according to all of the three studies. In a coming article we will dive deeper into the proposed kinds of negative emissions solutions for achieving Germany’s climate targets and the potential of some of those solutions. 

To learn more about carbon removal and how it can play a role for your company’s climate strategy, follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn, subscribe to our newsletter or directly get in touch with us.

How much carbon do we need to take out of the atmosphere? Current global scenarios

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Net zero targets are taking centre stage in climate policy and action. Depending on the speed of emissions reductions in the coming years and the ambition level of climate goals, negative emissions and thus carbon removal from the atmosphere will be instrumental for achieving those targets. To get a better picture of the scale required we dig into the latest global reports on Net Zero scenarios. 

Net Zero terminology

Even after aggressive emission reduction have taken place, residual emissions might still occur. Greenhouse gases must then be actively removed from the atmosphere in order to further reduce emissions on balance. A country or organisation achieves net zero emissions or climate neutrality when the amount of emissions removed reaches that of the residual emissions, i.e. when no more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere on balance. Emissions removed from the atmosphere are also called negative emissions. Various negative emissions technologies exist, which today mainly focus on the removal of CO2 as the most important greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, hence the focus on carbon removal.

Here it is necessary to differentiate between carbon removal, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and use or utilisation (CCU). CCS prevents emission from fossil fuels from entering the atmosphere in the first place, but does not remove any emissions from the atmosphere. In that respect it is not a negative emissions technology or solution. CCU refers to the use of captured CO2 in the production of fuels or other products. If a particular CCU process and product actually leads to negative emissions or not depends on where the captured CO2 comes from and on the life-time of the product in question. Figure 1 explains the difference between carbon removal, CCU and CCS.

Figure 1: Differences between Carbon Removal, CCU and CCS (source: cr.hub)

Clearly, terminology is important when it comes to setting and specifically achieving credible Net Zero targets or climate strategies as well as when evaluating Net Zero claims or scenarios.

Assessing global scenarios

Given the vast amount of global climate scenarios and modeling exercises we only focus on a few of them in the following. Figure 2 shows an exemplary emission pathway for achieving 1.5°C, while at the same time showing traditional mitigation technologies, such as renewables and energy efficiency and carbon removal separately. The figure is based on data from the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) climate scenarios for central banks and supervisory authorities.

Figure 2: Necessary order of magnitude for carbon removal for emission paths of 1.5 °C (source: cr.hub)

In order to widen the scope of the analysis and to reduce the risk of looking in only one direction, we included scenarios of five different organisations:

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero by 2050 Roadmap, the Consultation Paper Reaching climate objectives: the role of carbon dioxide removals by the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), the Special report: Global warming of 1.5°C of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), McKinsey’s Climate math: What a 1.5-degree pathway would take and NGFS’s Climate scenarios. A few numbers on the relevant amount of negative emissions has been distilled from the report The case for Negative Emissions by the Coalition for Negative Emissions. We are aware that this selection only captures part of the available literature.

All scenarios considered aim to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. Still, comparing scenarios and studies is difficult due to different assumptions on which part of the economy and thus which emissions are included in the scenario or what exactly qualifies as carbon removal and what does not. In addition, the probabilities in keeping below a certain temperature threshold differ between scenarios and studies.

All of the above shows that increasing attention needs to be paid to making modeling and scenario assumptions for Net Zero as clear as possible in order to understand the implications of the scenario outcomes. 

Rapid scale-up of carbon removal needed

What do the scenarios have in common?

Emission reductions from large-scale deployment of renewables and electrification of large parts of the industrial and transport sectors are included in all scenarios. Yet, all scenarios agree that there is a significant need for negative emissions in the gigatonnes (Gt CO2eq) range to achieve the 1.5°C climate target, as Figure 3 shows (data sources: Coalition for Negative Emissions, IEA).

Also, carbon removal technologies have to be available on a large-scale basis already during this decade and reach the Gt level by about 2030 from a very low level today. Given today’s greenhouse gas emissions of almost 50 Gt per year, the removals needed according to the five scenarios in 2050 amount to about 5 to 20 per cent of current global emissions. This is a stark reminder that negative emission technologies are not marginal implementations and potential fixes on the race to Net Zero, but important requirements to deal with residual emissions in laggard and hard-to-abate sectors.

Where do the numbers disagree and why?

On the upper end are the high range numbers of the ETC and the IPCC with up to 10 GtCO2eq of carbon removal by mid-century, while the IEA’s Net Zero Roadmap features on the lower end with an expected need of 2.4 Gt of negative emissions by 2050. The IEA foresees a total capture of 7.6 Gt including CCS and CCU. However, removals from the atmosphere make up only about 30 per cent of those. Also, the scenario assumption of the IEA include no new investments into unabated coal power plants and new oil and gas fields or coal mines from 2021 onwards, as well as the phase-out of unabated coal power globally by 2030. The level of ambition for classical mitigation strategies is very high here compared to the other four scenarios.

Figure 3: Required negative emissions for 1.5°C climate targets according to different scenarios in Gt CO2eq/year (source: cr.hub)

If a medium pathway such as in the NGFS or McKinsey scenarios is taken seriously, that means that negative emission technologies (NETs) need to be scaled up rapidly within the coming decades to achieve a removal potential in the Gt scale. A scale-up of at least 50 times from the present days is needed for that according to The case for Negative Emissions report. Especially as the current pipeline for carbon removal projects including Natural Climate Solutions, Bioenergy with CCS and Direct-Air-Capture until 2025 only stands at about 0.15 Gt (source: Coalition for Negative Emissions).

Implications for policy

To achieve net zero by 2050 while keeping global temperature below 1.5°C will require unprecedented efforts and are seemingly not plausible any longer without large-scale utilisation of carbon removal. Indeed, even many 2-degree pathways hinge on negative emissions although on a lower level, especially if international climate action falls short of more ambitious action (source: Minx, et. al., Fuss et. al.).

This leaves policy makers with many questions, such as:

  • Which ways exist to integrate carbon removal in climate policy?
  • What is the interaction between emission reduction and removal policy?
  • How to scale-up NETs and innovation in the sector?
  • Where to focus investments and resources?
  • How to implement carbon removal credits and how to integrate them into the emission trading systems such as the EU ETS?

On the EU-level the first initiatives are on their way to support carbon removal, such as the Negative Emissions Platform and the European Commission wants to propose a robust carbon removal certification system by 2023. In addition, research and innovation on carbon removal are being funded by Horizon 2020 and the follow-up program Horizon Europe. The Innovation Fund, which receives 10 billion EUR from the income of the EU Emission Trading System, includes the commercial demonstration of low-carbon technologies, such as carbon removal and CCS into its framework. 

As an example of how increased climate ambition leads to negative emissions is the case of the German new climate law. In a forthcoming article, we will have a closer look at the need for carbon removal in Germany’s road to greenhouse gas neutrality.

How is the industry preparing?

For the private sector, especially for corporations and companies that set climate targets and aim to go for their own net zero goals, the complexity of the discussion rises. Internationally acknowledged standards of setting climate targets and the role removals and reduction play within those such as the Net Zero Standard by the Science Based Targets initiative will be of great importance (source: SBTi).

Industry-led initiatives on voluntary carbon markets such as the Taskforce for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM), where cr.hub is part of the consultation group are needed as well to drive the demand and market. The TSVCM just launched their report of Phase II of implementing an industry-wide carbon market. However it is important that only high-quality removals feature in those industry-led initiatives in order to achieve real climate benefits. The discussion of what a high-quality removal actually entails, is a story for another time. We will come back to that in further articles.

In conclusion it becomes clear thatmany players and organisations are taking carbon removal and negative emissions now much more seriously in their climate and energy modelling scenarios and as a potential tool for reaching net zero targets. In addition, NETs have to be scaled dramatically in order to achieve the required removal potential.

Get in touch with us to learn more or subscribe to our newsletter.

Carbon. Removal. Accelerated.

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With this motto, our goal is to counter climate change also with carbon removal and negative emissions. carboneer guides your company through carbon markets, negative emissions and climate strategies.

But first things first: 

What is Carbon Removal and how does taking CO2-emissions out of the atmosphere relate to global climate goals?

CO2-emissions back at pre-Corona levels

Looking back at the past year, the Corona pandemic will probably be the most remembered thing of 2020. And in the public perception, the pandemic and its effects seem to have displaced climate change as the biggest challenge.

As a result, global energy-related CO2-emissions also fell by about 6 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. Due in particular to lockdown restrictions and the economic crisis, energy-related emissions fell by more than 2 gigatons in 2020 to just over 30 gigatons. No one expected such a drop in emissions in early 2020. In fact, some countries, such as Germany only achieved their climate targets as a result of the Corona crisis. Otherwise emissions would not have dropped that much. 

However, a look at the latest figures and statistics reveals that energy-related CO2-emissions have been back at the previous year’s level since December 2020 and could end up just 1 % below pre-Corona emissions of 2019 during 2021. 

Carbon Removal essential for climate goals

Let’s leave 2020 and 2021 behind for a moment and look at how CO2-emissions would have to develop to meet the Paris Climate Agreement’s 1.5 or 2 degree target. For that to happen, carbon emissions would have to decline globally by about the same factor (3-7 percent) each year for the next few decades as they did during the Corona pandemic.   

However, based on the most current plans of the various countries regarding their climate targets (Nationally Determined Contributions), it is more likely that the overall decrease in emissions will be no more than 2 percent by 2030 compared to today. This corresponds to a temperature increase of 2.4 ˚C from pre-industrial levels. Because of these realities, the discussion about large-scale atmospheric removal of CO2 through negative emission technologies is gaining momentum. 

Necessary order of magnitude for carbon removal for an emission path of 2 °C (Data source: NGFS (Network for Greening the Financial System) Scenario Explorer. Model: REMIND-MAgPIE 1.7-3.0; provided by IIASA)

Carbon Removal solutions need support

All solutions are needed in the fight against climate change, from emission savings and reductions to the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. For a process or technology to be considered carbon removal, four conditions must be met:

  1. CO2 is physically removed from the atmosphere.
  2. the removed CO2 is permanently stored outside the atmosphere.
  3. emissions generated during the process are included in the overall balance.
  4. emissions generated during the process are less than the negative emissions produced.

However, scaling and application of the various nature-based and technological solutions to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are still in their infancy.

Selected negative emission technologies

Based on scientific research from the IPCC reports, these negative emission technologies will need to remove and permanently store several gigatons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere over the coming years and decades. This is roughly equivalent in magnitude to the decline in CO2-emissions caused by the Corona pandemic, the largest economic collapse since the 1930s. 

carboneer: the experts on CO2 markets and negative emissions

Against this background, Simon Göß and Hendrik Schuldt founded carboneer.

Our expertise covers mandatory carbon markets and negative emissions. Through our consulting services (link) we help companies to understand the complexity of carbon markets, to meet the legal requirements and to successfully use negative emissions for the company’s climate strategy. 

Feel free to contact us with your questions.

Let’s take the next step towards solving the climate crisis together.

Your team from carboneer.