Near-term deployment of novel carbon removal to facilitate longer-term deployment

Scenarios-which account for the costs of and interactions among different mitigation options-show that we will need to remove hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere over the course of the century to limit warming to well below 2 degrees C, make efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C, and ensure the sustained well-being of our planet. Yet at present, only 2 Gt is being removed per year, and nearly all of it is from forestry-only 0.1% is from novel forms of carbon removal. This commentary shows that the deployment of novel CO2 removal (CDR) over the next decade, its formative phase, is likely to be consequential in determining whether CDR will be available at scale and in time to reach net-zero CO2 emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement's temperature goal.