Where you sit shapes what you fund

We come at carbon from opposite ends. One of us works on engineered removal at Climeworks. The other advises governments on nature-based programmes. We are the two camps this debate keeps setting against each other.

At London Climate Action Week, we watched a room test split in real time. A panel asked the audience to split a hypothetical 2% of global GDP, (~ $2 trillion a year) across three options with a portfolio approach in mind: 

1) Industrial emissions reductions in energy, steel, cement and transport sectors;

2) Natural climate solutions in forests, wetlands, grasslands and farmlands; and. 

3) Engineered climate solutions that use technology to pull carbon dioxide from the air and store it.

The room, mostly nature people, put 36% to industrial, 47% to nature, and 13% to engineered. A separate panel of 22 global experts arrived at slightly different estimates: roughly half to industrial, a third to nature, and 14% to engineered. Both gave engineered the smallest share. They split the rest in almost opposite ways.

The durability debate has stoked the fires of this divide for years. Nature stores carbon that can be lost again to fire, drought or clearing. Engineered storage generally holds for much longer. In the debate as it is usually framed, durability becomes the single test a solution must pass. But a more pragmatic view builds a portfolio that weighs durability alongside additionality, measurement and co-benefits (including adaptation and resilience), and lets the mix shift over time.

Balance several factors at once and the tension loosens. Industrial cuts do the largest near-term work. Nature is available now, at scale, with gains for people and biodiversity. Engineered removal is at an earlier stage and costs more today, so its near-term share is smaller. But it needs investment now to be ready at the scale we will need later. They do different jobs on different timescales. That is the case for holding all three, with the mix changing as the decades pass.

Curiosity is the first step to counter-productive tension and practical complementarity. We were lucky to have tech voices into a nature room at all. The next step is to understand and advocate for each other. One way to start with this is to learn more about each other’s sector and have the ability to advocate for both: imagine coming from the nature-based solutions world and pitching engineered removals to a boardroom and vice versa. The thought of this is intimidating to us both, but understanding each other’s impacts, priorities and risks is what ultimately helps us move the dial in the direction we all want.

We came into this from opposite ends, and we still do. But arguing over the split helps no one, and time is short. Back all three now, and each is ready when its moment comes. That is something we can solve together.

Michael Denner leads science and technology at Climeworks.

Danae Maniatis is an independent consultant working on nature-based carbon.

Both are part of SHIFT-CM.

About SHIFT-CM

SHIFT-CM is a collection of scientists, practitioners, and policy-makers focused on improving the scientific foundation of Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) crediting. SHIFT CM’s Optimising Climate Solutions working group asks how a credible climate portfolio should be split across industrial emissions reductions, natural climate solutions, and engineered removals.