CO2 emissions are not being cut quickly enough, and some emissions are very hard to abate. Therefore, carbon removal is necessary to mitigate global warming. This is an important issue that the Technology Council aims to shed a light on through a new collaborative project.
Carbon removal (often called CDR) refers to technologies, approaches, and solutions that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in products or in geological, terrestrial, or maritime reservoirs. The solutions can be both nature-based and industrial, and include everything from tree planting to ocean-based CO2 removal and direct air capture of CO2.
Norway has important prerequisites for carbon removal. It is at the forefront of carbon capture and storage, with a major focus on CO2 management in the Longship project.
Norway has great potential to store CO2 in the continental shelf, the vast forest and agricultural lands, a long coastline, and large ocean areas. These advantages could facilitate the development of carbon removal technologies, both to meet national climate targets and to expand the sector on a global scale.
To gather a wide array of thoughts and perspectives on carbon removal in Norway, the Norwegian Board of Technology contributes to the implementation of a citizen workshop. The project is coordinated by the Danish Board of Technology and owned by Carbon Gap, a non-profit organisation focusing on scaling up carbon removals. The project aims to develop roadmaps for carbon removal in Norway, France, and the United Arab Emirates, and to promote international governance and standards for carbon removal.
The Norwegian Board of Technology will write a brief report on carbon removal. Geoengineering was the topic of our Tech Trends Report for the Norwegian Parliament in 2022. In the upcoming report, we will consider the following questions:
- What are the different nature-based and industrial solutions for carbon removal?
- What barriers stand in the way of carbon removal? What are other countries and the EU doing?
- What are important questions for Norway?
