Beyond Cutting Emissions

Even if every country met its Paris Agreement pledges — and most are not on track — we would still face roughly 2.5 to 2.8 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. The reason is that CO2 already in the air persists for centuries. Humanity has added more than a trillion tons of it to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, and that carbon keeps warming the planet long after it is emitted.

This is where carbon capture enters the picture — technologies and natural processes that actively remove CO2 from the air or prevent it from reaching the atmosphere. The approaches range from planting trees to industrial machines that filter carbon directly from ambient air at scale.