Going carbon negative: What are the technology options?

Microsoft recently announced that it aims to become carbon negative by 2030. What’s more, the company said that by 2050, it plans to have removed from the atmosphere all the carbon that it has emitted since it was founded in 1975. This is a significant commitment from an individual company, and it underscores the potential for approaches using negative emissions, or carbon dioxide removal, to play an important role in meeting international climate goals. Carbon neutrality, or “net zero,” means that any CO 2 released into the atmosphere from human activity is balanced by an equivalent amount being removed. Becoming carbon negative requires a company, sector or country to remove more CO 2 from the atmosphere than it emits. Meeting ambitious international climate goals may require global CO 2 emissions to fall below zero in the second half of this century, achieving what is known as net negative emissions. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, published in late 2018, almost all the pathways analysed by the authors relied to some extent on carbon removal approaches in order to achieve net negative emissions after 2050. What is the difference between carbon neutral and carbon negative? IPCC pathways with a less than 1.5°C temperature rise in 2100 Open expand