What If Country Commitments for CO2 Removal Were Based on Responsibility for Historical Emissions?

[Geoengineering News]

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/11/4350

Author 

Asbjørn Torvanger

CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, Norway

Energies 2023, 16(11),4350; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16114350

Received: 30 March 2023 / Revised: 14 May 2023 / Accepted: 22 May 2023 / Published: 26 May 2023

Abstract

This study explored the consequences of allocating commitments to remove CO2 to countries according to their responsibility for human-made climate change based on historical (cumulative) CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use and industry. The ‘carbon debt’ to be restored through CO2 removal was calculated as the remaining carbon budget for warming by 2 °C minus emissions until 2100. The study included the remaining carbon budget from the recent literature and scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. This experiment showed that industrialized countries would need to take on the biggest share of CO2 removal if the calculation of historical emissions starts with the industrial era. If accounting instead starts with the global negotiations on climate policy in 1990, however, developing countries would have to take on the largest commitment for CO2 removal. Given this scheme and with the aim of settling the carbon debt over two decades with equal annual efforts, the eight countries with the largest shares of historical emissions would have to take on annual CO2 removal efforts from 1 to 12 Gt CO2. These CO2 removal commitments would imply substantial efforts for many countries but nevertheless depend on the choice of a fairness principle and calculation method to render this operational.

Keywords: 

CO2 removal; fairness; historical emissions; carbon debt

Source: MDPI