Launching new alliance of permanent carbon removal builders
February 23, 2023 │ Giana Amador, Executive Director of the Carbon Removal Alliance
The science is clear: to meet our climate goals we need to both reduce emissions drastically and clean up billions of tons of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and oceans. This is a tall order, but if we’re successful carbon removal could be the next trillion-dollar industry — driving economic, health, and environmental benefits for communities across the globe.
In just a few years, carbon removal has developed from infancy into a budding industry. Dozens of companies have launched first-of-a-kind projects, driving down technology costs and employing new workforces. Five years ago, it would have been hard to imagine the spectrum of solutions that exist today — from using industrial waste to store carbon to sprinkling rocks on croplands to injecting bio-oil underground to capturing CO2 directly from the air. The private sector has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to support carbon removal startups, and policymakers across the political spectrum have accelerated their development through laws like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act.
Today, twenty companies are coming together to launch the Carbon Removal Alliance (CRA) — the first policy coalition focused on a portfolio of high-quality, permanent carbon removal. Investments and policy to-date have only focused on a fraction of the carbon removal solutions we need, severely hamstringing our ability to build a robust industry at scale. As of 2021, carbon removal companies have permanently stored fewer than 10,000 tons of CO2, orders of magnitude below the billions of tons we need in the next 30 years. There has also been a wide range in the quality of projects claiming to perform carbon removal, posing fundamental risks to the integrity and efficacy of carbon removal as a climate solution. Meeting our climate goals hinges on our ability to deliver carbon removal that stores emissions for thousands of years, has transparent and rigorous verification systems, and minimizes risks while maximizing benefits to the communities where these projects break ground.
The CRA unites the companies and organizations bringing carbon removal into the next phase. We are committed to advancing carbon removal solutions that are:
Permanent: Carbon removal must be durable over timescales comparable to the atmospheric lifetime of carbon emissions. We focus on policies that promote carbon removal with permanence of 1,000 years or more.
Net negative: Carbon removal approaches must result in a net reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Additional: Carbon removal projects must demonstrably result in removals that would not have otherwise occurred without the project.
Verifiable: Developing and adopting scientifically rigorous and transparent methods for monitoring, reporting, and verification is essential for permanent carbon removal.
The CRA will work on behalf of companies developing carbon removal solutions, as well as buyers and organizations supporting the development of the field, to advance these principles by:
Developing and advocating for new technology-neutral policies to accelerate the development and deployment of a portfolio of permanent, high quality carbon removal solutions
Educating policymakers about the economic, environmental, and community benefits of carbon removal
Surfacing the challenges faced by early-stage companies and entrepreneurs building emerging carbon removal technologies
Together, we will work to realize the potential of the trillion-dollar carbon removal industry — catalyzing innovation, creating high-quality jobs, driving economic development, and ensuring we achieve our
climate goals.
If you’re a builder or buyer of carbon removal and are interested in joining, we’d love to hear from you. And if you’re a policymaker interested in collaborating, we’d love to chat with you as well. Contact us at info@carbonremovalalliance.org.