At a Time of Climate Crisis: Why net-zero does not go far enough

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not enough – we will also have to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere

In this month’s column for the Irish Times MaREI researcher Dr Hannah Daly at ERI, University College Cork questions why net-zero does not go far enough. 

News that wind and solar are together the fastest-growing source of electricity in history is an important source of hope. They are growing fast enough to overtake rising demand, which will cause fossil fuels, and their emissions, to decline.

With electrification of ground transport, heating and much of industrial energy, the vision of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions within the next few decades seems to be within reach. This prospect didn’t seem realistic until quite recently.

While attaining this net-zero milestone is imperative, it is not alone sufficient to keep our climate within a safe operating space. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a global commitment enshrined in the Paris Agreement, the world will need to go into a phase of carbon drawdown, after hitting the net-zero milestone, where we remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than we are putting in. This will cause the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to fall, and with it, the global temperature.

Read the full article here.