Net zero is impossible without large-scale, durable carbon removal.
Date: 3 January 2026
There’s a quiet shift happening in climate strategy. Not a headline shift. More like the kind you feel in meetings when nobody wants to say the awkward part out loud.
Emission reductions alone won’t get us there.
Not to 1.5°C. Not even reliably to well below 2°C.
This isn’t about weak ambition. It’s about physical reality and cumulative carbon. Every year we keep emissions too high, we don’t just “delay” climate action. We add to the atmospheric stock that future generations will have to unwind.
And that’s why carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has moved from “nice-to-have” to a structural requirement.
Most IPCC-consistent pathways assume we’ll need on the order of 7–9 GtCO2 removed per year by 2050. That range shows up repeatedly in scenario synthesis and is echoed in Nordic market analysis. (Implement)
Today, global removals are still roughly ~2 GtCO2 per year, and most of that volume is dominated by land-use based pathways such as afforestation/reforestation and soil practices. (Implement)
Even before we argue about quality, that implies we’re staring at a mid-century annual gap of roughly 5–7 GtCO2.
Zoom out from annual to cumulative, and it becomes even clearer why CDR is not a side quest. The same analysis frames a cumulative need of roughly 450–1,100 GtCO2 of removals this century to meet climate targets. (Implement)
Emission reductions stop additional CO2 from entering the atmosphere. CDR deals with two uncomfortable realities: historical emissions already in the air, and residual emissions that remain even after aggressive decarbonisation.
This is why the “offset” framing is increasingly breaking. Avoidance is about a counterfactual. Removal is about physical subtraction and storage.
The stock framing matters too. Nordic analysis references today’s atmospheric concentration at roughly ~430+ ppm, and a commonly referenced safer threshold around ~350 ppm. That gap is the difference between stabilising risk and living inside a permanent escalation loop. (Implement)
Nature-based removals can deliver real benefits, but they’re exposed to reversal risk (fire, pests, drought, land-use change) and saturation. That’s why durability is becoming the dividing line in serious procurement.
Engineered pathways like biochar, BECCS, DACCS, mineralisation and enhanced weathering are built around controlled storage and clearer MRV, aiming for century-to-millennia timescales rather than a few reporting cycles. (IPCC)
Durable CDR is capital-heavy. It does not scale on sporadic spot buying.
Nordic market analysis frames the investment requirement starkly: cumulative global CDR investments of roughly EUR 6–15 trillion by 2050, while 2024 investment was only around EUR 800 million, versus an estimated EUR 200–500 billion per year needed by 2050. (Implement)
CDR is not a substitute for reductions. It’s the part of net zero that turns pledges into physics.
Author: Thomas Munch, CEO in Pure Carbon Partners. Follow Thomas Munch on LinkedIn.
.svg)
.svg)
