Negative emissions
The Energy White Paper, Powering our Net Zero Future (CP 337), published in December 2020 by HM Government, suggests that negative emission as: ‘Achieved by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, for example, through direct air capture or bio-energy production with carbon capture.’
Keeping 1.5°C Alive: Closing the Gap in the 2020s, version 1.0, published by the Energy Transitions Commission in September 2021, defines negative emissions (or net negative emissions) as a term: ‘…used for the case where the combination of all sector CO2 emissions plus carbon removals results in an absolute negative (and thus a reduction in the stock of atmospheric CO2).’
Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, Glossary, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, defines net negative emissions as: ‘A situation of net negative emissions is achieved when, as result of human activities, more greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere than are emitted into it. Where multiple greenhouse gases are involved, the quantification of negative emissions depends on the climate metric chosen to compare emissions of different gases (such as global warming potential, global temperature change potential, and others, as well as the chosen time horizon).’
See also: Net negative.
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