To meet the Paris Agreement climate goals, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be reduced swiftly, reaching net zero by mid-century and net negative in the long term. Emissions reduction remains the top priority to slow warming, but to avoid the worst climate impacts, removing GHGs will also be necessary.
How do you remove GHGs? One set of approaches harnesses the power of nature to sequester carbon, such as planting trees. But we can also pull GHGs out of the environment using technology — for example, technology that extracts carbon dioxide molecules out of the atmosphere through fan-like machines, or that use crushed rocks to increase the surface area of natural chemical reactions. Other approaches include genetically engineering plants to enhance carbon uptake, and processes that increase the alkalinity of oceans to sequester more carbon. There’s also much research needed to explore the potential of technological removals for other key GHGs such as methane and nitrous oxide.
But here’s the challenge: To date, less than one million tons of GHG emissions have been permanently removed with technology, and many scientists estimate that around 10 gigatons need to be removed per year by mid-century. So, we have to swiftly bridge this gap and scale these technologies. Some, such as direct air capture, are more mature than others based on early funding support, while others are frontier solutions, ready to undergo vibrant experimentation and innovation.
The GHG Removal initiative aims to illuminate, develop, and scale these technological solutions, building on existing efforts already in play, by bridging the advancements needed across science, policy, and markets in a way that maximizes public good without creating unacceptable unintended consequences, particularly for vulnerable communities.
The Earth Fund is devoted to driving global action to meet the scale of technological GHG removal required in the coming decades.
Contact: GHGRemovalinitiative@bezosearthfund.org
A Global Roadmap to 2050
Download the roadmap here.
In the history of human innovation, we have rarely scaled anything to the gigaton scale. While investments in removal technologies have grown significantly, much more is needed to ensure the world remains on the path to remove multiple gigatons per year by 2050.
This is why the Bezos Earth Fund, in collaboration with RMI, has launched Scaling Technological Greenhouse Gas Removal: A Global Roadmap to 2050, a first-of-its kind report, laying out an action-oriented path toward achieving roughly 10 gigatons of technological GHG removal by 2050 via 83 initiatives with actions and milestones necessary to meet this ambitious target. More information can be found here.
Strategy Workshop on Scaling Greenhouse Gas Removal
To inform the development of this roadmap, the Bezos Earth Fund convened the 'Strategy Workshop on Scaling Greenhouse Gas Removal’ alongside the U.S. Department of Energy and Stanford University, in February 2024. The event included over 500 global experts and leaders from all areas of the GHGR ecosystem, including decision makers, researchers, industry, community advocates, government, think tanks, and philanthropies. Participants spent the two-day workshop in thematic and technical breakout sessions, examining and identifying the key barriers and enablers, open questions and dependencies, and risks and unintended consequences related to scaling technological GHG removal solutions. These outputs, together with expert and public surveys, helped inform the roadmap’s milestones, timelines, stakeholder touchpoints, and priorities. A summary of the workshop can be found here.
Ideation Prize
The Bezos Earth Fund’s $1 million GHG Removal Ideation Prize — announced in January 2024 and managed by Experiment — was geared toward innovators, scientists, engineers, and environmental enthusiasts, whether new to this space or with decades of experience, to help illuminate and innovate on ideas to accelerate the scaling of technological GHG removal solutions. From over 700 applications, 64 solutions were identified as Phase 1 finalists, and 13 Phase 2 winners were awarded additional financial resources to continue scaling their proposed solution over the next year. The announcement of winners and finalists can be found here.
You can explore the complete list of winning solutions, dive deeper into the Phase 2 innovations, and follow their year-long journey here.