Carbon Removals vs Reductions Misses the Moment

By: Mary Grady

This column was originally published in Environmental Finance on September 6, 2024.

When you’re in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging. Today, the world finds itself in a climate hole, yet we dig ourselves deeper by continuing to emit climate-changing gases into the atmosphere.

Despite this reality, there’s an emerging perception that, when it comes to carbon credits, removals – pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it in long-term storage – are preferable to or more impactful than emissions reductions. This is demonstrated by increasing corporate hesitation about reduction-based carbon credits, on the one hand, and a raft of high-profile removal-based agreements and initiatives, on the other.

While all corporate leadership should be applauded, this “either/or” approach is dangerous for climate action. For the atmosphere’s balance sheet, emission reductions and removals are both vitally important.

The well-established greenhouse gas mitigation hierarchy makes the case plain by prioritizing actions as follows: Avoid, reduce, replace, compensate, and remove. For natural climate solutions, the conservation hierarchy follows a similar structure, emphasizing the following order of priority: protecting, managing, and then restoring lands. Considering that the world’s forests store 861 gigatonnes of carbon, it’s evident that achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is impossible without forest protection. Therefore, our primary near-term focus should be on reducing emissions, including efforts to protect and sustainably manage forests.

The importance of forest protection was underscored in a recent peer-reviewed study in Nature Climate Change, revealing that the four climate strategies with the greatest potential for global impact and the highest scientific confidence are tropical forest avoided loss, tropical forest reforestation, temperate forest reforestation, and temperate forest avoided loss. Avoided loss (reductions) and reforestation (removals) are all vital climate actions. This finding is echoed in the latest IPCC Synthesis Report, which identifies reduced conversion of ecosystems and ecosystem restoration as two of the five actions with the greatest mitigation potential.

When it comes to corporate climate action, the reality is that some sectors are difficult to fully decarbonize, meaning we need a comprehensive strategy, which evolves over time, as recommended by the Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting. While placing significant emphasis the importance of removals, the team at Oxford was clear that before 2030 a well-balanced carbon credit portfolio should prioritize emission reductions, including nature-based reductions.

There are a few simple reasons for the importance of emission reductions today.

First, deforestation and forest degradation continue to represent 12-20% of total emissions. Methane leaks account for 12% of all U.S. emissions and approximately one-third of global warming to date. As these examples and many others show, we still have a lot of emissions to reduce, a process that carbon markets can accelerate.

Second, habitat loss is contributing to the Sixth Mass Extinction. Nearly half of all species are in decline and current extinction rates are 1,000 – 10,000 times higher than expected background extinction rates. Reducing deforestation protects habitat, and improves water quality, soil health, and the livelihoods of those dependent on these resources.

Third, emissions that we reduce now are better than emissions we remove later, because they provide immediate benefit to the climate. Removals take longer to have an effect, whether you are talking about planting trees – which take time to grow – or investing in a new technology that has yet to reach global scale. If we rely only on these solutions, we will see far greater levels of dangerous warming in the coming decades.

Finally, protecting and improving management of existing ecosystems is more cost-effective than creating new ones. With limited time and resources, we need to make both near-term and long-term investments to ensure we are getting the biggest climate bang for our buck.

A simple “either/or” approach rarely captures real-world dynamics. We need “both/and,” especially when confronted with the stark reality of the climate crisis. We need nature and technology; voluntary and compliance markets; jurisdictional scale and projects; regulations and incentives. And we definitely need reductions and removals.

A focus on solely removals misses the moment and devalues the critical action we know is needed right now to keep emissions out of the atmosphere. Instead, credit buyers should consider a portfolio approach that balances the strengths of different strategies to achieve long-term climate stability.

Mary Grady is executive director of ACR, a carbon crediting program operating in global compliance and voluntary carbon markets.