March 30, 2023 - Your Scoop in CDR
Science Direct article describing the funding for CDR over the past year At the November 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, a coalition of national governments—including the United States, European Commission, Japan, United Kingdom, and Norway—announced a coordinated global effort to ramp up CO2 removal (CDR) technology by investing billions of USD in demonstration projects. Their Mission Innovation Launchpad aims to build, by 2025, multiple direct air capture (DAC) hubs around the world, each capable of removing at least 1000 tonnes of CO2 directly from the atmosphere annually [1].
The announcement came on the heels of a flurry of other policy and funding boosts aimed at promoting CDR technology over the previous year. In April 2022, an alliance of Silicon Valley companies—including Google, Meta, Shopify, and Stripe—made an advance market commitment of 925 million USD for carbon removal credits [2]. The same month, the 100 million USD XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, awarded its first one million USD Carbon Removal prizes to fifteen teams from around the world, with another 80 million USD slated to be awarded in 2025 [3]. In August 2022, the US Inflation Reduction Act became law, boosting tax credits for carbon removal, capture, and storage [4], and in November the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies Act of 2022 (CREST Act) was introduced to the US House of Representatives, following a Senate version in June; the law aims to expand the CDR development efforts of the US Department of Energy (DOE) [5]. In December, a draft report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) echoed other statements, calling CDR “essential” to meeting climate goals and outlining strategies for NOAA to expand their CDR strategies [6].
General Assembly votes to seek World Court's opinion, in quest for … The UN General Assembly will seek the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on countries’ obligations to address climate change, following the adoption by consensus of a resolution on Wednesday
The resolution was put forward by the cyclone-battered Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu, supported by a “core group” of 17 countries from various regions, and is focused on the adverse impacts of climate change on small island developing States as well as climate justice.
How climate change made the Mississippi tornadoes more likely - Grist 3/30/23 A new study explores the link between rising temperatures and more deadly tornadoes.