The cost of temporary carbon removal – CarbonPlan

Carbon removal costs are everywhere in climate discussions — this project costs $10, that one costs $200. Policymakers and corporate planners look to metrics to inform their decisions, and cost per ton of carbon dioxide ($/tCO₂) has become a near-universal unit of measure. But are all tons the same? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Especially when it comes to carbon removal, the duration of carbon storage — what we call a project’s “permanence” in our reports — is a critical variable missing from standard $/tCO₂ metrics. Addressing the duration of carbon storage is crucial to ensure that climate solutions match the scale of the climate problem. CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel use impact the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.1 1 D Archer et al. (2009) Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide Ann. Rev. Earth Plan. Sci Removing CO₂ from the atmosphere counteracts the warming effects of historical or hard-to-avoid emissions, but only so long as the removal is permane

Carbon removal costs are everywhere in climate discussions — this project costs $10, that one costs $200. Policymakers and corporate planners look to metrics to inform their decisions, and cost per ton of carbon dioxide ($/tCO₂) has become a near-universal unit of measure. But are all tons the same? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Especially when it comes to carbon removal, the duration of carbon storage — what we call a project’s “permanence” in our reports — is a critical variable missing from standard $/tCO₂ metrics. Addressing the duration of carbon storage is crucial to ensure that clim