How much CO2 can we store in geological deposits to "turn down" the temperature from our fossil-fuel emissions?

Matt Gidden et al. assessed the potentials, and the @iiasa.ac.at #ScenarioServices team & @quantstack.bsky.social developed interactive maps!
👉 cdr.apps.ece.iiasa.ac.at/story/pruden...

Here is the starter pack you have all been waiting for:

IPCC AR7 Scientists

(the scientists that will write the next assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the next few years)

Thanks @soniaseneviratne.bsky.social

bsky.app/starter-pack...

NEW – Guest post: How the role of carbon storage has been hugely overestimated | @gidden.bsky.social @joerirogelj.bsky.social

Read here: buff.ly/QY7LyJ8

Assuming it stays there

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

And the great teams at @iiasa.ac.at and @quantstack.bsky.social have gone even a step further generating amazing visuals of our results.

Check out cdr.apps.ece.iiasa.ac.at/story/pruden... to dive in!

This kind of work requires an interdisciplinary team of experts, and it was my pleasure to work closely with many excellent coauthors including @joerirogelj.bsky.social @carlschleussner.bsky.social @mirandaboe.bsky.social among many others

What our study makes clear: we will need carbon storage at scale to achieve the long-term goal of the #ParisAgreement, but we need to manage it wisely. Reducing emissions as fast as possible today is the clearest and best strategy to avoid saddling future generations with unmanageable risks.

How are national energy and climate planners expecting to utilize it and over what time scales?

We suggest a best practice that countries make explicit their planned use of carbon storage in their climate plans as part of their commitments to the #ParisAgreement - especially in the run up to #COP30

Which countries, which sectors, and which generations can stake claim to this incredibly valuable resource?

We argue carbon storage should be treated as a scarce #intergenerational resource that needs to be managed properly today and essentially forever.

This has strong implications for how we establish and regulate #carbon #markets that result in a net-negative future rather than prolonging intrenched #fossil interests and business practices. A mix of policy and market forces are needed to generate more revenue from storing CO2 than emitting it.

We find that profound shifts are needed in firm incentives for extracting and storing CO2. The countries and industries with the most know-how and capacity for storage carbon are the same as those who currently take it out of the ground.

Critically, we find that robust, safe carbon storage is inequitably distributed amongst countries. Those with the largest storage volumes tend to also those most responsible for current emissions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

By the end of the century, some scenarios already breach our proposed prudent limit of geologic carbon storage

When we extrapolate scenarios beyond 2100, we find almost all would breach this limit by 2200

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

What does this mean for global mitigation strategies?

#IPCC scenarios that limit temperature well below 2C use carbon storage to mitigate continued use of fossil fuels, deal with GHGs in expensive-to-mitigate sectors, and do #CDR.

More reasons to avoid overconfidence in temperature overshoot, as highlighted by @carlschleussner.bsky.social and colleagues: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A key finding of our analysis: if we were to use the most durable carbon storage available to us for #CDR in order to draw temperature down after an #overshoot of #1p5C (where we are headed at full speed), we could at most bring temperatures down by 0.7C

We find a prudent planteary limit for CO2 storage of 1460 Gt CO2, almost 10x less than our assessed technical potential of 11,800 Gt CO2 - which is in line with previous studies

Our dataset is built on open data, we provide gridded and spatially explicit maps.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We estimate storage volume outside of:
- human settlements
- environmentally protected areas
- seismically active areas
- areas precluded by treaties
- risk limits for re-releasing CO2

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Working with a inderdisciplinary team of experrs in climate science, geology, petroleum engineering, and social science, we ask: where can we reliably, safely, practically and prudently store carbon for millienia?

Highlights:
- new risk-based assessment of CO2 storage potential consistent with #UNFCCC
- a cap on how much we can #overshoot the #1p5 limit of the Paris Agreement
- most #IPCC scenarios breach the limit by 2200
- clear country winners and losers
- all data open access: zenodo.org/records/1565...

Our paper is out today in @nature.com where we assess a Prudent Planetary Limit for Geologic Carbon Storage:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

No action shots, but waiting for the train after winters day!