Below is the executive summary of Carbon180’s Transition Book: Priorities for Administrative Action on Carbon Removal in 2021+. Please direct any inquiries to hello@carbon180.com.
We are at the inflection point for stopping climate change. Growing public awareness and mobilization alongside increasingly devastating impacts from wildfires, hurricanes, and drought make clear that this moment is critically positioned for addressing the climate crisis. The next administration will need to take bold action in 2021 and beyond to drastically and swiftly reduce emissions across all sectors of the economy. And while there have been many decarbonization roadmaps that chart that track, there remains a critical piece missing from the climate fight: carbon removal.
The scientific consensus finds that cleaning up the carbon already in the atmosphere — in addition to reducing emissions — is essential to avoiding the worst impacts of climate change and protecting frontline communities across the globe. To hit our climate goals, estimates suggest that we’ll need to deploy a portfolio of solutions on the scale of 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by mid-century. While there has been significant promising innovation over the last decade, investments from the public and private sectors still do not match the scale needed.
Beyond their climate benefits, carbon removal solutions offer enormous economic and social advantages, including generating high-quality jobs, creating new sources of revenue for rural communities, developing new carbon-negative industries, improving biodiversity, and positioning the United States as the leader on carbon removal.
Though there has been growing interest in and action on carbon removal from Congress, there remains a foundational gap between our goals and the current efforts to make them a reality. The next administration should establish leadership on carbon removal in its first 100 days, taking early action to lay the groundwork for and begin actualizing the just carbon-removing economy of the future.
This report serves as a guide for transition teams as they explore pathways for administrative action on climate. We make recommendations for high-priority steps the White House should take within the first 30 days, as well as additional priorities for the first 100 days. For each agency, we outline key actions that can be executed within existing authority and funding. We also propose legislation and a draft first-year budget that the president should pursue in partnership with Congress. Together, these pieces form a comprehensive roadmap for ambitious administrative action on carbon removal.
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