Rising to the challenge: CarbonLock 2024 Conference

Delegates at the CarbonLock 2024 Conference saw policy-makers, research leaders and government discuss the critical role of removals in reaching our net zero goal under the Paris Agreement.

Without atmospheric carbon removals, also known as carbon dioxide removal, reaching net zero will not be possible.

The CarbonLock Future Science Platform began in 2022. The team is driving innovation and building Australia’s science and technology capacity in removals.

The goal is to permanently and responsibly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at scale. These new technologies will be needed alongside existing solutions such as nature-based afforestation and large-scale decarbonisation.

Strong industry support needed alongside science leadership

While atmospheric carbon levels continue to rise, CarbonLock researchers are making breakthroughs and moving rapidly toward field trials, proof of concepts, patent applications, and invention disclosures.

Key challenges like the absence of carbon removal markets, regulatory and legal frameworks, social acceptance, or agreed-upon monitoring and verification approaches could inhibit innovative research outcomes – or create barriers to scaling atmospheric carbon removal technologies.

Australia needs to establish new industries focused on atmospheric carbon removal. It’s a critical step if we are to effectively scale up technologies, and thereby lower net emissions, offset hard-to-abate sectors, and decrease atmospheric carbon levels.

While Australia has a comparative advantage in carbon dioxide removal technologies, the scale and urgency of the challenge is posing complex questions for policymakers and the research community.

Moving faster on removals needs an integrated approach

Keynote speakers unpacked some early thinking around the large scale of removals that would be needed globally. It is estimated that 6-8 gigatonnes of removals – and perhaps more – will globally be needed per year by 2050. What that means for Australia is removing at least 10 Great Pyramids of Giza, or 60 megatonnes of removals per year.

Engineered removals – the kind being progressed through CarbonLock – would need to work to remove over a thousand times the amount of carbon currently sequestered by our natural land and ocean sinks. This is to stay within the limit of 2 degrees global warming set out in the Paris Agreement.

CarbonLock has a diverse research portfolio which is underpinned by a rigorous social science agenda. However, there are also areas in which we could look to expand, for example, in developing agreed measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) frameworks.

MRV is critically required internationally to enable consistent atmospheric carbon removal approaches, and help de-risk these technologies and their deployment for policy-makers and markets.

According to Andrew Lenton, the removals research sector will need to move faster if we are to achieve our goals under the Paris Agreement.

“We need a shared national research agenda that opens the door to industry players to collaborate,” Andrew said.

CarbonLock Program Manager Audrey Bester said the scale of the challenge will demand new ways of thinking and working.

“To successfully remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at the rate and scale we need, all solutions must combine atmospheric capture with permanent storage, and test its viability in the Australian context – which includes economic, governance and social systems,” Audrey said.

How we’re rising to the challenge

Our atmospheric carbon removal portfolio spans multiple domains of science and technology, including engineering biology, AI/ML and genomics.

CarbonLock encompasses research priorities as broad as direct air capture, enhanced mineralisation, ocean-based carbon uptake and biomineralisation.

Realising atmospheric carbon removal at scale in Australia by the year 2050 will require multi-disciplinary collaboration across the research sector to build a new industry.

Working together to lay strong foundations in our organisation and more broadly could help realise the collective vision for functional, verifiable and permanent carbon removals on a large scale by the year 2040.

CarbonLock also collaborates with the Responsible Innovation Future Science Platform and is seeking to understand what the public might think about the risks and benefits associated with carbon dioxide removal technologies – and whether they are prepared to accept the trade-offs that are involved around these technologies.